The ATSC Digital Television System
MARK S. RICHER, SENIOR MEMBER, IEEE, GLENN REITMEIER, MEMBER, IEEE,
TOM GURLEY, SENIOR MEMBER, IEEE, GRAHAM A. JONES, JERRY WHITAKER, MEMBER, IEEE,
AND ROBERT RAST, SENIOR MEMBER, IEEE
Invited Paper
The ATSC digital television standard describes a system designed
to transmit high-quality video and audio, and ancillary data within
a single 6-MHz terrestrial television broadcast channel. This paper
outlines the overall architecture of the system and serves as an
introduction to the papers that follow in this special issue of the
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE.
Keywords—Advanced Common Application Platform (ACAP),
Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), compression, dig-
ital television, interactive television, MPEG-2, Program and System
Information Protocol (PSIP), 8-VSB.
I. INTRODUCTION
Digital television (DTV) has ushered in a new era in
television broadcasting. The impact of DTV is more sig-
nificant than simply moving from an analog system to a
digital system. Rather, DTV permits a level of quality and
flexibility wholly unattainable with analog broadcasting.
Analog television systems, by their nature, are rigidly de-
fined and constrained to a narrow range of performance that
offers few choices. Analog systems also have fundamental
quality limitations. The move to a digital broadcasting
system has enabled a significant step up in performance,
quality, and a wider range of services. DTV can deliver
programs free of transmission impairments throughout the
service area while still occupying a 6-MHz transmission
channel. In terms of performance, the ability to provide
high-definition pictures with high-quality surround sound
audio is essential to the future of broadcasting, as consumers
Manuscript received June 17, 2005; revised September 29, 2005.
M. S. Richer and J. Whitaker are with the Advanced Television Systems
Committee, Washington, DC 20006 USA (e-mail: mricher@atsc.org).
G. Reitmeier is with NBC Universal, New York, NY 10112 USA.
T. Gurley is at 229 Old Colony Way, Rocky Mount, NC 27804 USA.
G. A Jones is with the National Association of Broadcasters, Washington,
DC 20036 USA..
R. Rast is with Micronas Semiconductors, Poway, CA 92064 USA.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JPROC.2005.861714
0018-9219/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 94, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
are increasingly offered such enhancements with other forms
of delivery. An important element of the Advanced Televi-
sion Systems Committee (ATSC) system is the flexibility to
expand functions by building upon the technical foundations
specified in standards such as ATSC Digital Television
Standard A/53 [1] and Digital Audio Compression (AC-3)
Standard A/52 [2]. These ATSC standards, established in
1995, were the world’s first standards for DTV, and they
established the precedent for system quality and flexibility
that separates DTV from all the existing analog television
systems.
With the NTSC analog system, and its PAL and SECAM
counterparts used in other countries, the video, audio, and
some limited data information (e.g., closed captioning) are
conveyed by modulating an RF carrier in such a way that a
receiver of relatively simple design, by today’s technology,
can easily demodulate and reproduce the video and audio
elements of the signal, and related data. As such, a complete
program is transmitted by the broadcaster that is essentially
in finished form. In analog television, camera, transmission,
and display parameters are tightly coupled as part of an
end-to-end system, which limits the ability to modify many
of the basic system choices (e.g., picture resolution). The
ATSC digital system design, for the first time, anticipated
and enabled the separation of camera, transmission, and
display properties. The ATSC standard pioneered a layered
architecture that separates picture formats, compression
coding, data transport, and transmission, as illustrated in
Fig. 1. This means that additional levels of processing
are required after an ATSC receiver demodulates the RF
signal, before a complete program can be assembled and
presented. The receiver first processes the digital bitstream
extracted from the received signal to yield a collection of
program elements (video, audio, and/or data) that match
the service(s) that the consumer selected. This selection
is made using system and service information, transmitted
as part of the digital signal. The audio based on the ATSC
A/52B standard and video elements based on the ISO/IEC
37
Fig. 1. Layered architecture of the ATSC DTV system.
MPEG-2 standard are delivered in digitally compressed
form and must be decoded for presentation. Video may
be high definition (HDTV) or standard definition (SDTV).
HDTV has a resolution of approximately twice that of
conventional television and a picture aspect ratio of 16 : 9
(horizontal:vertical). Audio may be monophonic, stereo, or
multichannel. Various forms of data may supplement the
main video/audio program (e.g., closed captioning, descrip-
tive text, or commentary) or may be one or more stand-alone
services (e.g., a stock or news ticker).
The nature of the ATSC DTV system is such that it is
possible to provide new features that build upon the infra-
structure within the broadcast plant and the receiver. One
of the major enabling developments of digital television,
in fact, is the integration of significant processing power
in the receiving device itself. Historically, in the design of
any broadcast system—be it radio or television—the goal
has always been to concentrate technical sophistication
(when needed) at the transmission end and thereby facilitate
simpler and lower cost receivers. Because there are far
more receivers than transmitters, this approach has obvious
business advantages. While this concept still applies, the
complexity of the transmitted bitstream and compression
of the audio and video components require a significant
amount of processing power in the receiver, which is now
practical because of the enormous advancements made in
digital IC technology. Analog television served the public
well, but had reached the limits of its capability to improve.
The capability of digital television to evolve may be its
greatest asset.
II. OVERVIEW OF THE ATSC DIGITAL TELEVISION SYSTEM
The ATSC digital television standard describes a system
designed to transmit high-quality video and audio, and ancil-
lary data, within a single 6-MHz terrestrial television broad-
cast channel. The design emphasis on quality resulted in the
advent of digital HDTV and multichannel surround sound.
38
The system can deliver about 19 Mb/s in a 6-MHz terres-
trial broadcasting channel and about 38 Mb/s in a 6-MHz
cable television channel. This means that encoding HD video
essence at 1.106 Gb/s1 (highest rate progressive input) or
1.244 Gb/s2 (highest rate interlaced picture input) requires
a bitrate reduction by about a factor of 60.3 To achieve this
bitrate reduction, the system uses complex video and audio
compression technologies.
These compression schemes optimize the scarce resource
of the transmission channel by representing the video, audio,
and data sources with as few bits as possible while preserving
the level of quality required for the given application.
The RF/transmission system of the ATSC DTV standard is
designed specifically for terrestrial as well as cable applica-
tions. The layered structure is such that the video, audio, and
service multiplex/transport subsystems are useful in other ap-
plications as well. Companion papers in this section describe
the digital satellite and cable systems in North America and
demonstrate the close relationship with ATSC standards.
A. System Flexibility
The ATSC DTV standard provides a huge data “pipeline”
to the receiver that can support a wide variety of applications.
For example, in a 6-MHz channel, a broadcaster can transmit
one high-definition program, or an HDTV program with one
or more simultaneous standard-definition programs, or mul-
tiple simultaneous SDTV programs, or a virtually limitless
array of data services, or various combinations of all three.
This flexibility in program services is a key benefit of the
ATSC DTV standard for both broadcasters and consumers.
The capability to change services depending upon the
needs of the consumer is critically important given the
1 720 2 2 2 2
1280 60 2 10 = 1:105 920 Gb/s (the 2 represents the
factor needed for 4 : 2 : 2 color subsampling, and the 10 is 10 bits/sample).
2 1080 2 2 2 2
1920 30 2 10 = 1:244 160 Gb/s (the 2 represents the
factor needed for 4 : 2 : 2 color subsampling, and the 10 is 10 bits/sample).
3Note that that when the overhead numbers are added, the progressive-
versus-interlaced numbers quoted above become closer.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 94, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
Fig. 2. ITU-R digital terrestrial television broadcasting model.

interrelationship of terrestrial, cable, and satellite distri-

bution systems today. In markets such as North America,
for example, it is not uncommon for a television broadcast
network to operate local TV stations, have affiliated cable
services, and provide content to satellite distributors. Given
this interrelationship, it is important that commonality and
interoperability among the various media is maintained to
the greatest extent possible.
B. DTV System Block Diagram
A basic block diagram representation of the ATSC DTV
system is shown in Fig. 2. This representation is based on one
adopted by the International Telecommunication Union, Ra-
diocommunication Sector (ITU-R), Task Group 11/3 (Digital
Terrestrial Television Broadcasting) [3]. According to this
model, the digital television system can be seen to consist
of four major elements, three within the broadcast plant plus
the receiver.
1) Source Formats: The source formats for the ATSC
standard were carefully selected for their interoperability
characteristics with film [wide aspect ratio and 24 frames
per second (fps)], computers (square pixels and progressive
scanning), and legacy television systems (480 lines and
ITU-601 sampling), as illustrated in Fig. 3. In addition,
the HDTV formats and the square pixel SDTV format are
related by simple 3 : 2 ratios, allowing high quality yet
economical conversion among these formats with relatively
low-order interpolating filters. The legacy ITU-601 related
formats maintain the 3 : 2 ratio vertically, but require slightly
more complex relationships horizontally.
2) Video/Audio System: The video/audio system, as
shown in Fig. 2, refers to the bitrate reduction methods
appropriate for application to the video, audio, and ancillary
digital data streams. The purpose of compression is to re-
duce the number of bits needed to represent the audio and
video information to a level that can be contained within the
Fig. 3. Video formats and frame rates specified by the ATSC system. (Note
that the frame rates include both 60.0 and 59.94 Hz, and 30.0 and 29.97
variations).
transmission channel capacity. ATSC employs the MPEG-2
video stream syntax (Main Profile at High Level) for the
coding of video and the ATSC standard “Digital Audio
Compression (AC-3)” for the coding of audio. The ATSC
DTV standard defines the video formats for HDTV and
SDTV as shown in Fig. 3. ATSC consumer receivers are
designed to decode all HDTV and SDTV streams providing
program service providers with maximum flexibility.
The term “ancillary data” dates from the original drafting
of A/53 and is a broad term that includes control data and sup-
plementary data, including data associated with the program
audio and video services. As standards were developed to de-
fine how to transport and process data, it became clear that
different forms of data served very different purposes and
different standards were needed for metadata and essence.
Data delivered as a separate payload can provide indepen-
dent services as well as data elements related to an audio- or
video-based service, as described in a later section.

RICHER et al.: THE ATSC DIGITAL TELEVISION SYSTEM 39

 3) Service Multiplex and Transport: The service multi-
plex and transport system, as shown in Fig. 2, refers to the
means of dividing each bitstream into “packets” of informa-
tion, the means of uniquely identifying each packet including
packet type, and the appropriate methods of interleaving
or multiplexing video bitstream packets, audio bitstream
packets, and data bitstream packets into a single transport
mechanism. The structure and relationships of these essence
bitstreams is carried in service information bitstreams, also
multiplexed in the single transport mechanism. In devel-
oping the transport mechanism, interoperability among
digital media—such as terrestrial broadcasting, cable distri-
bution, satellite distribution, recording media, and computer
interfaces—was of prime consideration. The ATSC system
employs the MPEG-2 transport stream (TS) syntax for
the packetization and multiplexing of video, audio, and
data signals for digital broadcasting systems. The MPEG-2
TS syntax was developed for applications where channel
bandwidth or recording media capacity is limited and the
requirement for an efficient transport mechanism is para-
mount. It also provides the critical timing information for
the receiver to perform video and audio synchronization.
a) Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP):
PSIP, defined in ATSC Standard A/65, is a small collection
of tables designed to operate within every TS for terrestrial
broadcast of digital television. Its purpose is to describe the
information at the system and event levels for all virtual chan-
nels (channel numbers are not tied directly to the actual RF
channel frequency) carried in a particular TS. Additionally,
information for analog channels as well as digital channels
from other TSs may be incorporated.
There are two main categories of information in the
ATSC PSIP standard: system information and program data.
System information allows navigation and access of the
channels within the DTV TS, and the program data provides
necessary information for efficient browsing and event
selection. Some tables announce future events and some are
used to locate the digital streams than make up an event.
The PSIP data are carried via a collection of hierarchically
arranged tables, repeated in the packet stream at frequent
intervals.
4) RF Transmission System: The RF transmission
system, as shown in Fig. 2, refers to channel coding and
modulation. The channel coder takes the packetized digital
bitstream, reformats it, and adds additional information that
assists the receiver in extracting the original data from the
received signal, which due to transmission impairments
may contain errors. In order to protect against both burst
and random errors, the packet data is interleaved before
transmission and Reed–Solomon forward error correcting
codes are added. The modulation (or physical layer) uses
the digital bitstream information to modulate a carrier for
the transmitted signal. The basic modulation system offers
two modes: an 8-VSB mode for terrestrial broadcasting and
a 16-VSB mode intended for cable applications. The 8-VSB
mode was designed for spectral efficiency, maximizing the
data throughput with a low receiver carrier-to-noise (C/N)
threshold requirement, high immunity to both cochannel
40
and adjacent channel interference and a high robustness to
transmission errors. The attributes of 8-VSB allow DTV
channels to coexist in a crowded spectrum environment
that contains both analog and digital television signals. In
addition, the lower power requirements (typically, 12 dB
lower than analog NTSC) of 8-VSB allow ATSC DTV
stations to exist on channels where analog stations cannot
due to interference constraints. The spectral efficiency and
power requirement characteristics of 8-VSB are essential
to the conversion of terrestrial broadcast transmission from
analog to digital since new spectrum is not allotted during
the transition phase.
The recently developed “Enhanced-VSB” (E-VSB) mode
involves the transmission of a backward-compatible signal
within the standard 8-VSB symbol stream that can be re-
ceived at a lower carrier-to-noise ratio than conventional
8-VSB. The E-VSB mode allows broadcasters to trade
off some of their data capacity for additional robustness.
With an E-VSB transmission, some of the approximately
19.4 Mb/s data is allocated to the robust mode and some is
allocated to the normal 8-VSB mode. However, the amount
of delivered data (payload) is reduced for the robust mode
because part of the payload is traded for additional forward
error correction (FEC) bits to correct bit errors that occur
with reception under weaker signal conditions (resulting in
up to a 6-dB improvement).
5) Receiver: The ATSC receiver recovers the bits repre-
senting the original video, audio, and other data from the
modulated signal. In particular, the receiver performs the fol-
lowing functions:
• tunes the selected 6-MHz channel;
• rejects adjacent channels and other sources of interfer-
ence;
• demodulate (equalize as necessary) the received
signal, applying error correction to produce a transport
bitstream;
• identifies the elements of the bitstream using a transport
layer processor;
• select each desired element and send it to its appropriate
processor;
• decodes and synchronizes each element;
• performs product-specific video, audio, and data
processing;
• presents the programming to the appropriate video or
audio transducer.
Noise, interference, and multipath are elements of the
terrestrial transmission path with which receiver circuits are
designed to deal. Innovations in equalization, automatic gain
control, interference cancellation, and carrier and timing
recovery improve signal reception and create product per-
formance differentiation. In fact, current ATSC receivers
have demonstrated remarkable improvements in reception
performance compared to initial receiver implementations.
The decoding of transport elements that make up the
programming is usually considered to be a straightforward
implementation of the MPEG and AC-3 specifications,
although significant opportunities for innovation in circuit
efficiency or power usage exist. Innovations in video de-
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 94, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
coding offer opportunities for savings in memory and circuit
speed and complexity. Product differentiation based on pic-
ture quality is also widespread, resulting from innovations
in error concealment, format conversions, perceptual picture
processing, and specific display related processing. The user
interface and new data-based services are other important
areas for product differentiation.
The development of large-screen consumer displays
has played an important role in the evolution of receivers.
Whether intended for use in an integrated receiver or as
a stand-alone display, the rapid deployment of new large,
high-resolution flat panel displays has substantially changed
the video landscape.
For example, one of the first concerns of technologists
with regard to HDTV in the home was the size of the dis-
play device. In order to fully appreciate the image quality of
HDTV at typical viewing distances, it is necessary to view
the image on a large screen. However, with CRT technology
a large screen also means a large, heavy enclosure. Flat panel
displays and projection systems with HDTV resolution have
essentially eliminated this physical constraint.
III. DATA BROADCAST AND INTERACTIVE CAPABILITY
The rollout of the digital television infrastructure opens
up a new frontier in communication. This is leading to pow-
erful new applications extending beyond regular television
programming, with possibilities that hold considerable com-
mercial potential.
Recognizing the interest in data broadcast applications, the
ATSC developed a suite of data broadcast standards (Docu-
ments A/90–A/97) to enable a wide variety of data services,
which may be related to one or more video programs being
broadcast or stand alone services. Applications range from
streaming audio, video, or text services to private data de-
livery services. Data broadcast receivers may include per-
sonal computers, televisions, set-top boxes, or other devices.
Generally speaking, data broadcast applications targeted
to consumers can be classified by the degree of coupling to
the main video programming, specifically the following.
• Tightly coupled data are intended to enhance the TV
programming in real time. The viewer tunes to the TV
program and simultaneously receives the data enhance-
ment along with it.
• Loosely coupled data are related to the program, but
are not closely synchronized with it in time. For ex-
ample, an educational program might send supplemen-
tary reading materials or self-test quizzes within the
broadcast stream.
• Noncoupled data are typically contained in separate
“data-only” virtual channels. They may be data in-
tended for real-time viewing, such as a 24-hour news
headline or stock ticker service.
1) Advanced Common Application Platform (ACAP):
The ACAP standard (A/101) is a platform for interactive
television services. ACAP was developed as the result of
a landmark harmonization effort between the ATSC DTV
Application Software Environment (DASE) Standard and
RICHER et al.: THE ATSC DIGITAL TELEVISION SYSTEM
Cable Television Laboratory’s (“CableLabs”) Open Cable
Application Platform (OCAP) specification.
In essence, ACAP makes it appear to interactive program-
ming content that it is running on a single platform, the
so-called common receiver. This common receiver contains
a well-defined architecture, execution model, syntax, and
semantics. As a “middleware” specification for interactive
applications, ACAP gives content and application authors
assurance that their programs and data will be received and
run uniformly on all brands and models of receivers.
The term interactive television (ITV) is broad and includes
a vast array of applications, including:
• customized news, weather, and traffic;
• stock market data, including personal investment port-
folio performance in real time;
• enhanced sports scores and statistics on a user-selective
basis;
• games associated with program;
• online real-time purchase of everything from groceries
to software without leaving home;
• video on demand (VOD).
There is no shortage of reasons why ITV is viewed with
considerable interest around the world. With the rapid adop-
tion of digital video technology in the cable, satellite, and
terrestrial broadcasting industries, the stage is set for the cre-
ation of an ITV segment that introduces to a mass consumer
market a whole new range of possibilities.
ACAP is intended to provide consumers with advanced
interactive services while providing content providers,
broadcasters, cable and satellite operators, and consumer
electronics manufacturers with the technical details neces-
sary to develop interoperable services and products.
IV. FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS
The basic design of the ATSC DTV system both antic-
ipates and facilitates continuing improvements in perfor-
mance in many ways.
• By specifying the transmitted picture formats, camera
resolutions and frame rates in production can continue
to improve, and display processing technology can
continue to improve the overall quality delivered to the
viewer. The recent introduction of 1080P displays is
an excellent example, where receivers can deinterlace
1080/60I and upconvert 720/60P formats. In addition,
flexible frame rate displays with 72-Hz refresh have
been demonstrated that allow an outstanding rendi-
tion of film-based content (transmitted at 1080/24P or
720/24P) by eliminating the artifacts of the traditional
3 : 2 sequencing that is used to display 24-fps film at
60-Hz television rates.
• By specifying the MPEG decoder syntax, encoders
can continue to improve the quality of ATSC signals
(or further reduce bitrates to allow the introduction
of additional services) as processing power improves.
Increased motion search range, noise reduction pre-
processing and multipass encoding algorithms are
examples that have already contributed to improved
41
 quality and are now commercially available in ATSC
encoders.
• Through the flexibility of the MPEG transport protocol,
the ATSC standard can deliver multiple simultaneous
services and new services can be added without dis-
rupting the installed base of receivers
• By specifying the transmitted VSB signal, receivers can
continue to improve their ability to reject interference
and deal with transmission impairments such as mul-
tipath. Recent improvements in adaptive equalization,
carrier recovery, and cochannel interference rejection
are clearly evident in the performance of the latest
ATSC receivers.
In addition, the ATSC continues to develop new capabilities
that can result in the introduction of new services, such as
data broadcasting and ACAP, as described in the previous
section of this paper.
V. OVERVIEW OF ATSC DTV SECTION
Coverage of the ATSC DTV system in this special issue of
the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE is divided logically into the
following topics:
• RF, modulation, and transmission;
• video and audio coding;
• packetized transport and multiplex, including program
and system information protocol;
• data broadcasting and interactive television;
• receiver implementation.
This section also includes closely related systems for cable
and satellite delivery as implemented in North America:
• carriage of digital video and other services by cable in
North America;
• satellite direct to home.
REFERENCES
[1] ATSC digital television standard, ATSC: A/53D, Advanced Televi-
sion Systems Committee, Washington, D.C., Jul. 19, 2005.
[2] Digital audio compression (AC-3) standard, ATSC: A/52B, Ad-
vanced Television Systems Committee, Washington, D.C., Aug. 20,
2001.
[3] ITU-R Task Group 11/3 (Chairman), “Report of the second meeting
of ITU-R Task Group 11/3, Geneva, October 13–19, 1993,” Jan. 5,
1994, p. 40.
[4] Advanced Television Systems Committee, Washington, D.C.,
Guide to the use of the ATSC digital television standard ATSC:
A/54A, Dec. 4, 2003.
[5] C. Basile, A. P. Cavallerano, M. S. Deiss, R. Keeler, J. S. Lim,
W. C. Luplow, W. H. Paik, E. Petajan, R. Rast, G. Reitmeier, T.
R. Smith, and C. Todd, “The US HDTV Standard,” IEEE Spectr.,
vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 36–45, Apr. 1995.
[6] J. Zdepski, R. S. Girons, P. Snopko, V. Sathe, W. Paik, E.
Petajan, J. Lim, X. Lebegue, and K. Challapali, “Overview of
the Grand Alliance HDTV Video Compression System,” in Conf.
Rec. 28th Conf. Signals, Systems and Computers 1994 vol. 1, pp.
193–197.
[7] K. Challapali, X. Lebegue, J. S. Lim, W. H. Paik, and P. A.
Snopko, “The Grand Alliance System for U.S. HDTV,” Proc. IEEE,
vol. 83, no. 2, pp. 158–174, Feb. 1995.
42
Mark S. Richer (Senior Member, IEEE) re-
ceived the B.S. degree from the Rochester
Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY.
He was Vice President and General Manager,
CDS, a division of Thomcast Communications.
For 16 years, he was with with the Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS), where, as Vice
President of Engineering and Computer Ser-
vices, he was responsible for development of new
technologies for PBS and its member stations,
design of audio/video systems, and management
of computer operations. He was instrumental in the development of tech-
nological innovations, including the Line 21 closed captioning for the deaf
system and selection and implementation of digital video compression and
transmission technology. He also led PBS efforts in the area of digital and
high definition television. He is currently the President of the Advanced
Television Systems Committee (ATSC), Washington, DC. The ATSC is
an international, nonprofit organization developing voluntary standards for
digital television. He holds two patents.
Mr. Richer is a Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television
Engineers (SMPTE). He served as Chairman of the System Subcommittee
Working Party on Test and Evaluation for the FCC Advisory Committee on
Advanced Television Service.
Glenn Reitmeier (Member, IEEE) received the
B.E.E degree (summa cum laude) from Villanova
University, Villanova, PA, and the M.S.E. degree
in systems engineering from the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
He is Vice President of Technology Standards,
Policy and Strategy at NBC Universal, New York.
Since joining NBC in 2002, he was involved in
the creation and launch of NBC’s new high-def-
inition cable channel, Universal-HD and the new
DTV multicast channel, NBC Weather Plus. He
is widely recognized as a pioneering visionary, creator, and architect of dig-
ital television. Early in his career, he was instrumental in establishing the
ITU 601 component digital video standard. During the competitive phase of
HDTV standardization, he led the Sarnoff-Thomson-Philips-NBC develop-
ment of Advanced Digital HDTV, which pioneered the use of MPEG com-
pression, packetized transport, and multiple video formats. He was a key
member of the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance, taking a leadership role in its
formation and in all of its all technical decisions, communications with gov-
ernment and industry, and interoperability efforts that lead to establishing
the ATSC digital television standard.
Mr. Reitmeier is the recipient of the Society of Motion Picture and Televi-
sion Engineers’ Progress Medal and the Leitch Gold Medal and holds over
50 patents in digital video technology.
Tom Gurley (Senior Member, IEEE) graduated
with distinction from Duke University, Durham,
NC, and received the M.S.E. degree from the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
He is a consultant to the broadcast industry
and a pioneer in digital television technology. He
served as Director of Testing for the Advanced
Television Test Center, responsible for laboratory
testing of the “Grand Alliance” system and its
six predecessors. Subsequently, he joined the
Association for Maximum Service Television
(MSTV) as Vice President of Technology and served as Technical Director
of the all-industry Model DTV Station Project (WHD-TV). He has been
active in the work of several ATSC committees. Previously in his career, he
managed advanced development for RCA Broadcast Systems, leading early
work in digital video and solid-state camera technologies, and served in
production, operations, and engineering capacities for radio and television
stations and a private satellite network. He holds three U.S. patents in digital
video and has authored numerous papers and presentations on television
technology.
Mr. Gurley is a Fellow of the SMPTE, and a member of Tau Beta Pi
and Eta Kappa Nu. He currently serves as President of the IEEE Broadcast
Technology Society.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 94, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
 Graham A. Jones was born in Stoke-on-Trent,
U.K., in 1944. He received the B.Sc. degree in
physics from Nottingham University, U.K., in
1964.
He started his career with the BBC and for 18
years was a partner of International Broadcasting
Consultants. Previously with Harris Corporation,
he was Engineering Director for the Harris/PBS
DTV Express road show. He is currently Director
of Communications Engineering with the Na-
tional Association of Broadcasters, Washington,
DC, working on advanced television issues, standards, and education. He is
author of A Broadcast Engineering Tutorial for Non-Engineers (Elsevier,
2005), and editor for the forthcoming 10th NAB Engineering Handbook.
Mr. Jones is a Fellow and Governor of the Society of Motion Picture
and Television Engineers. He is a Chartered Engineer and a member of
the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Society of Broadcast Engineers,
and the Royal Television Society. He was chair of the ATSC TSG/S1 spe-
cialist group on PSIP Metadata Communications and chairs the SMPTE S22
working groups on lip sync and image formatting. In 2004 he received the
ATSC Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award.
Jerry Whitaker (Member, IEEE) is the Vice
President for Standards Development of the Ad-
vanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC).
He supports the work of the various ATSC tech-
nology and planning committees and assists in
the development of ATSC standards and related
documents. He currently serves as Secretary
of the Technology and Standards Group and
Secretary of the Planning Committee, and is
closely involved in work relating to educational
programs. He is the author and editor of more
RICHER et al.: THE ATSC DIGITAL TELEVISION SYSTEM
than 35 books on technical topics, including The Standard Handbook of
Video and Television Engineering, 4th ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2003); NAB
Engineering Handbook, 9th ed. (National Association of Broadcasters,
1999), DTV Handbook, 3rd ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2001), and The Electronics
Handbook, 2nd ed (CRC, 2005). Prior to joining the ATSC, he headed the
publishing company Technical Press, Morgan Hill, CA.
Mr. Whitaker is a Fellow the Society of Broadcast Engineers and a Fellow
of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He has served as
a Board member and Vice President of the Society of Broadcast Engineers.
Robert Rast (Senior Member, IEEE) is in-
dustry liaison for Micronas Semiconductors
and chairman of the board of the Advanced
Television Systems Committee, an international
standards-setting body. In the 1990s, he was
General Instrument’s digital HDTV evangelist.
When the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance formed
in 1993, he became one of its leaders. More
recently, he has been an executive at Dolby Lab-
oratories and at two emerging digital technology
companies, DemoGraFX and LINX Electronics.
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